


Heart-fire

by genarti



Series: old drabbles and ficlets [9]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-21
Updated: 2004-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:32:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The star's daughter is her own person, heritage and all.  Written in December 2004.  Short fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart-fire

A star is: a great ball of flaming gas, a tiny pinpoint of clear light, a glittering sharp-edged spear-bearer with burning hair and molten silver eyes.

A star's child is: a flared falling arch of fire, a night's halo around the moon, a tall white-armed singer with cool eyes and a voice of stardust stillness.

Her father eats a berry of the sun, each morning, and grows slowly young again. She is young still, and earthbound, and there are no berries for her. She could not bear the fire in them; it would burn her up.

She loves bright ephemeral things, storms and seagulls and moonlight on dark waves, as is perhaps appropriate for a sun-spark star-child. Her father and their kinfolk shining still in the sky she loves with a deep steady warmth, but it is the quick dying things that capture her heart in sudden strong love. They are here and alive and joyous and then gone past recall into the eternal sunrise of Aslan's country, and in that immediacy there is a heart-song sharper and lovelier than the one she sings to every dawn.

A star knows the long stately dance through all the circling ages, but a star's daughter knows life and death and time sliding past. And so, when a fair-spoken young king comes to this island of seabirds and sleepers and smiles blue-eyed at her, she smiles back, because here is a handsome flaring life to treasure while she can.

A star's child will die; but her human children will hear the dawn-song high and thin and wild in their heart's veins, and her children's children will watch the night sky.


End file.
